


This Girl's A Silhouette

by leiascully



Series: There Will Be Other Dances [11]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:09:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's River's fourteenth birthday.  The Doctor has brought her a little something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Girl's A Silhouette

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: head!canon (spoilers for 6.07 "A Good Man Goes To War")  
> Concrit: Welcome  
> A/N: Thank you for the readthrough, [**gidget_zb**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/gidget_zb/), and thank you to Thea Gilmore and "This Girl Is Taking Bets" for the title. Surprisingly enough, this isn't for my bingo card, but don't worry, there'll be one of those sometime soon. It is part of my head!canon, though.  
>  Disclaimer: _Doctor Who_ and all related characters are the property of Russell T. Davies, Stephen Moffat, and BBC. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

The light wakes her. Before River's eyes are really even open, she's got her pistol leveled at the source of the light, a big blue box that has materialized in her room. The man closes the door of the box carefully behind him, extinguishing the light, but there's enough of an ambient glow for her to keep him in her sights. He waves the sonic screwdriver around almost absently and then tucks it back into his jacket.

"Sorry," he says, with a charming crooked smile. "Didn't mean to startle you. That ought to take care of the security systems for a bit. Melody Pond, I presume. Oh yes, I know all about you. May I sit down? Thanks." He settles himself in the single straight-backed chair in the sparsely furnished room and crosses one leg over the other, his hands clasped around his knees. "By the way, I'm the Doctor. I expect you knew that."

"They said the TARDIS made a noise when it landed," she tells him, sitting up slowly with her pistol still aimed at his chest.

"Nah," the Doctor says dismissively. "Only if you leave the brakes on. Someone very clever taught me to fly the TARDIS properly. You'd like her, in fact."

"I'm not listening to you," she said. "The Doctor lies. That's the first rule."

He nods. "Quite right of you. But you can trust me, Melody Pond."

"Or I could shoot you," she says. "Or I could press one button and have the whole station after you. What do you think of that?"

"Certainly you could," he agrees. "But I'm not sure you will, not just yet. I intrigue you, after all. Your greatest enemy, waltzing into your room in a big blue box in the middle of the night, and then he sits down to have a conversation. Not quite what you expected, eh?"

"You're rather scrawnier than you looked in the photos," she says critically. "Bit bowlegged as well. But otherwise, yes, what I expected."

"Ouch," he says, rubbing his hands together. "You never did hold back. Honesty is the best policy, though, and it's good to know you were never afraid of me."

"I'll have your screwdriver," she tells him, holding out her free hand. "And any other gadget you happen to be carrying."

"Not a lot of cabinets need putting up in here anyway," he says, opening his jacket and dipping his hand into the inside pocket. He tosses the screwdriver to her. "You'll have one of your own one day, you know. Ah, but that would be spoilers, I suppose."

He looks older than she expected, and sadder too. "Why are you here?" she demands.

"It's your birthday," he tells her. "I had a little gift for you from your parents. They're a bit indisposed, so I told them I'd pop over. You're what, fourteen now? Give or take a few centuries, naturally, since Madame Kovarian saw fit to whisk you out of your own era. Still, I can't help but think she did you a favor, in a way." He looks her over with a sort of sad amusement. "You won't have much to fear in this universe."

"Lying again," she says. "I haven't got parents. I was grown here at the compound, optimized to destroy you."

"Of course you've got parents," the Doctor says, standing up. He paces about and she says nothing but keeps her pistol sighted on him. "You've got wonderful parents who love you very much. Some of the best people I know, your parents. Human to the core, but incredible people."

"Weapons aren't born," she tells him. "They're created."

From the set of his shoulders, she can tell that he's angry. "Is that what they've been telling you? You're a weapon they built?"

She straightens up proudly. "I'm the ultimate weapon."

"And you've never wondered where you came from?" he demands. "And why haven't you shot me yet?"

"I could, if you like," she says coolly. "But it seemed too good to pass up, a chance to interrogate the Doctor."

He turns to face her. "But the Doctor lies."

"Not always," she says. "And his deceptions are easy to unravel."

"And you've never wondered why it is that you can speak every language you put your mind to?" he asks abruptly. "Never wondered why you never get timesick? Never wondered why the medical people are always prodding at you?" He touches the TARDIS. "I can give you those answers, Melody."

"How entertaining," she says. "The Doctor, afraid of a teenager."

"No." He shakes his head. "There are worse things in the universe than you, much worse. The people who tried to remake you in their own image, for one thing. But you can be more than that. There's so much more to life than this, my girl. So much more than you can imagine."

"How you do go on," she says. "Step away from the TARDIS, please."

He does. "Your name is Melody Pond. Your parents are Amelia Pond and Rory Williams, and a pair of braver people I've rarely met. You were taken from the century you were born in and brought here by Madame Kovarian and my enemies, though I hardly know why they've convinced themselves we're at war - I suppose I'll know in time. Your timeline and mine and your parents' are all tangled up and we never meet each other in the right order. The last time I saw you, you were a newborn. When you're older, you'll like red wine, though I can't for the life of me imagine why, because it's horrible stuff. You'll also have a penchant for dressing up and for causing trouble, especially when it's trouble for me."

"Well done me," she says. "Anything else?"

He gazes at her with an intensity she can't place. "You'll be loved. You'll be feared. You'll be remembered. You'll be a hell of a shot. You'll be twice as clever as anyone else in the room you walk into and you'll know it too. You'll save my life a hundred times. You'll save hundreds of thousands of other lives. You'll take lives too, mind you, but mostly in the name of the good fight." He spreads his hands and his voice gets deeper, angrier, more passionate. "There are so many things I can't tell you, but believe me when I tell you this: you are more than what they've made of you. You're more than a weapon. You're a legend. You're a hero. Every story about you is true. There's nobody but you making your destiny."

She slips the sonic screwdriver into the waist of her trousers. "My present, please."

He looks startled. "What?"

"My present," she repeats, holding out her hand. "You said it's my birthday and that you had something for me from my parents. I'll have it now."

He reaches into his pocket again and she keeps a wary eye on him, but what he pulls out is a scrap of cloth. She takes it and turns it over in her fingers, her hand raised so she can watch him at the same time. There are strange markings on it that turn into words as she looks at them: "River", it says on one side, and "Song" on the other.

"Is that supposed to be my name?" she scoffs. "Not quite right."

"The language of the Gamma forests," the Doctor tells her. "They don't have the word 'melody' and the only water in the forest is the river. It's a prayer leaf, meant to protect you and bring you home. Stitched for you at your birth by a woman who didn't even know you but loved you anyway, for the sake of yourself and your parents. A very brave woman. She died trying to save you from this." He waves a hand at the room. "From having your destiny written by other hands."

"Why can I read this?" she asks him.

"The TARDIS," he says. "It can translate anything. It altered your brain so that you could too."

"I've never seen it before in my life," she says. "Except in pictures. How did it change me?"

He squirms, and she doubts it's because she's still got a gun pointed at him; he seems to have a certain sangfroid about that whole situation. "Oooh, well, it's all a bit timey-wimey spacey-wacey. Your parents were traveling with me while your mother was pregnant."

"Is that all?"

"To put it delicately," he says huffily, "you began inside the TARDIS. It's where you were conceived. Which explains the rest of it, really, all the Time Lordy bits and bobs. So if you ever stopped to wonder if you were exceptionally extraordinary and why all of this happened to you, well. You _are_ exceptionally extraordinary. Unique in the whole of ever. To my knowledge nobody else has ever been born with the Time Vortex mucking about in their genetic code. No human, anyway. And all you had to do to be their chosen one, their holy weapon, was to get yourself born. Well done you."

"I've done more than _that_ ," she says, stung.

"No doubt you've jumped through every hoop they've shown you. You're a Pond, after all. You've never heard the word 'impossible' in your life, no matter who's said it to you." He smirks. "I wonder, though, have you ever had a thought of your own?"

"Are you trying to give me one?" she challenges. "Because I was thinking of just pulling this trigger. You're boring me."

"Don't take my word for it," he says, sitting down again. "Why don't you have a little chat with the TARDIS? She's programmed to always tell the truth."

"Is that even possible?" she asks skeptically.

He shrugs. "Possible. Not probable."

Still glaring at him, she takes the sonic screwdriver from her waistband and points it at the TARDIS.

"Ooh," he says. "Impressive."

"Second rule," she tells him. "Always do a scan. Follows naturally from the first rule." She glances down at the screwdriver, still not taking her gun of him, though her arm is starting to tire.

"And what have we learned?" the Doctor asks, settling in quite comfortably, apparently.

"No explosives," River says. "No electric shocks. She's clean."

"You don't even have to go in," the Doctor says. "Although she is quite impressive on the inside, I have to say. Spent a lot of years together, but she still manages to surprise me. Much the same as you will, come to think of it."

"Shut up," she growls, walking around the outside of the TARDIS.

"Just put your hand on her," the Doctor says. "She won't mind. Unless you're afraid of a madman and his big blue box."

"I'm not afraid of anything," she says.

"You'll outgrow that too," the Doctor says, his voice a little hollow. "But it will be worth it, every moment. Not if you stay here, though. If you stay here, they'll grind you down until there's nothing left of Melody Pond."

"You're a liar," she says.

"First rule," he says. "Everybody lies." He nods at the TARDIS. "Just ask her. If you don't hear something that changes your mind, I'll go quietly along and surrender to your beloved captors. You won't even have to waste a bullet on me. Anyway, I think she misses you."

"You're a trickster," she sneers, but she can't deny that she's curious. She's itched to see the inside of the TARDIS since her first strategy session on it. Surely it couldn't hurt to just brush it with her fingers - a spaceship made of wood is a curiosity indeed. She takes a step closer, still focused on the Doctor, and plants her palm against the TARDIS. It's as if a door slams open in her head, images of planets and stars and people she's never seen, monuments and gardens and temples, and there's a redheaded woman with bright eyes and a tall man with wrinkles of worry across his brow. And she's loved, she's loved, and she's never been looked at like that before. The feeling in the Doctor's voice she couldn't place: it was love. She has a _family_. She has a _future_ , and it isn't as a holy warrior in an endless, pointless, ruthless war.

"Is that real?" she demands, her hand still pressed to the panel of the TARDIS, which loves her too, she thinks. Further revelations: she'd heard the TARDIS had a soul, but she hadn't known it could love. She rubs the wood panel gently and absently as she studies the Doctor. Another flash: Kovarian scheming, every species she's ever heard of with their weapons leveled at the Doctor and her, lots and lots of running, and through it all, a sense of joy. She shakes her head, excitement building in her. "Is this my life, the wrong way 'round?"

"It's extremely probable," he says. "Time can be rewritten. On the other hand, the TARDIS has an excellent memory, given that she exists in all times at once, so you could say it's the best approximation of reality. The telepathic interface is somewhat limited, though, so I can't say what she's showing you is how I remember it."

She feels exhilarated. She feels alive. There are hundreds of millions of experiences out there she never even imagined in all her training, every study she made of the Doctor's habits and Companions and offenses against all right-thinking species.

Everything they said about him was right: he's often wrong, and he's something of a bully now and again, intimidating people with the weight of his knowledge, and he seems a bit of a coward sometimes, but they were wrong too, because he's full of hope and mischief and happiness and weariness and deep sadness and he _cares_ more than anyone she's ever met. He may be arrogant and foolish and incredibly nosy, but she can't help liking him, especially after what the TARDIS has shown her. At least she can believe that he won't try to remake her in his image: he seems committed to maintaining his position as quirkiest being in the known universe. He's, well, not human, but as _person_ as a being can be.

"Get up," she says, gesturing with her pistol.

The Doctor stands up easily. "Yes?" He rubs his hands together expectantly, craning his head at her.

She tosses the screwdriver to him and slips the pistol into her waistband instead, clicking the safety on. "Let's go."

"You and me?" he asks, pointing to her and then himself and looking around. It's a bit theatrical, but rather charming all the same.

"There's only the two of us here," she says impatiently. "I don't know how to pilot this thing" - she gives the TARDIS a consoling pat to show she doesn't really mean the "thing" - "so you've got to come along, haven't you? How am I supposed to get home if I don't know where home is?"

"What a lot I've missed," he says to himself. "And how we've missed you. Melody Pond, the girl we all waited for. She makes armies fall just by staring them into submission."

"Get a move on," she tells him. "I can't believe I'll be putting up with this for the foreseeable future."

"Believe it," he says, shoving his hands into his pockets. "You and I are going to have a great many adventures, Melody Pond."

"Call me River," she says. "Melody Pond was someone else. I'm going to be River Song."

"Yes, marm," he says.

"Oh, shut up," she says, and steps into the TARDIS and never looks back.


End file.
